Believe it or not, but our little country (and I'm talking about Belgium) has been huge in musical scenes over the years. Not in all of them of course but we delivered some big names in EBM (Front 242), techno (Praga Khan), jazz (Toots Tielemans) and recently we seem to have become on of the main countries for sludge with bands like Amenra, arguably one of the most impressive bands in the scene.

In fact, sludge is so big here that it has started to take over the black, doom and death metal scenes as well with a lot of crossover sounds. Here a band like Oldd Wvrms fits in perfectly. This quartet from Houffalize follows the current sludge doom storm, be it with an intense occult atmosphere, borrowing a lot from dark ambient as well.

There's two tracks on this debut e.p., both being crushing sludge vehicels with fierce vocals, brutal guitars and punishing drums. They're slow, impending and mesmerizing pieces of work. Title track 'Mater Serpentium' is my favorite, probably because of the clean but powerful chants used besides the typical sludge screams. They also provide a melodic grasp within all this bashing violence.

'The Pyre's Smoke', the second track, is another excellent sludge track, honouring the tradition of the genre and driving on vintage doom metal riffs. Yet in all, there is plenty of variation and plenty of intense 'freaking-out' passages so it's no wonder that I'm getting curious about the future of this band. If they can keep up with this level of songwriting, I can surely see them climb to the highest regions of the Belgian sludge scene.